Giving Compass' Take:

• In this first-person essay from The Mighty, author Leanne Carman gives us a detailed glimpse of how the brain works when one has constant, severe anxiety.

• How can those in the mental health sector work harder to reduce the stigma of anxiety and depression? What programs are we developing to get help to those who need it most and may be hiding the thoughts expressed in this piece?

• Here's how mental health, trauma and stress shape educational outcomes.

My eyes open with a start. My body is jolted from the dream. What was that noise? Was it someone fiddling with the lock? Are the neighbors trashing the front yard? Is this the day I run into the monster my younger self-created? These are the questions I ask first.

There is a part of my mind, buried underneath heavy clouds of fog, that knows the noise was just my cat getting restless or the wind getting too strong.

I’m not “crazy.” I have anxiety.

The noises mostly set it off late at night. It’s easy to be afraid in the dark — I know people who don’t struggle with anxiety who are. The problem is anxiety isn’t patient enough to wait until the sun is down and the lights are out.

Anxiety invites itself over at all times of the day.

I’ll be sitting on the train and feel a bump and a hundred headlines of derailed trains flash through my head in seconds. My friend will be running late for our dinner date and a thousand scenarios of what could have happened to her startle me. Suddenly I’m sending text after text to make sure she’s OK. I am aware the train just hit a bump on the track and the rest of the ride will be smooth. I know my friend got caught up at work and couldn’t answer my texts because she was too busy. The awareness of reality almost makes it worse because I can’t stop the anxiety from seeping through anyway.

Read the full article about what thoughts are like when you have anxiety by Leanne Carman at The Mighty (via GOOD Magazine).